


Fault

by idrilhadhafang



Series: BenPoe Rewrite [7]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: 30 Day Dark Fandom Challenge, Ben Solo deserved better, Canon Compliant, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Heavy Angst, Leia Organa-centric, Minor Leia Organa/Han Solo, POV Leia Organa, Past Leia Organa/Han Solo, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson is a hack, promise Of character development for Leia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 19:25:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14879750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang/pseuds/idrilhadhafang
Summary: Leia grieves and reevaluates.





	Fault

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing. 
> 
> Author’s Notes: For the prompt “deathfic/grief”. And it’s not really Leia’s fault that Luke contemplated murdering his nephew; there was no way she could have known. Call it her own skewed perceptions.

  
It’s one thing to be mourning her brother’s loss — it seems that everyone she cares about is lost in some way, horribly. It’s another to realize that in a way, everything that happened was basically your fault.

  
That’s what Leia thinks, even as she sits alone in her room, contemplating what exactly Poe’s told her. About Luke trying to kill Ben. It can’t be the whole story; she doubts that Luke would just decide that Ben needed to die. It wouldn’t work that way, would it? Not after having so much faith in his father, of all people. What changed?

  
But it’s her fault. If she hadn’t sent him away to Luke, would any of this have happened? She remembers what Han said on D’Qar — “We lost our son forever.” — and she can’t help but notice the crucial word. We. Not Snoke, but “we”.

  
Critical words. Snoke definitely tricked Ben, in the end, and Ben had all the choices in the galaxy, but Leia knows she had a part to play in this too.

  
She isn’t going to lie; she was scared of Ben. She didn’t necessarily hate her son (who could conceivably hate their own child?), but she was scared of him. Mostly of things that should have been normal, and yet with Ben…  
And so she sent him off to Luke. She thought Luke could help her and Ben, at least. Make him better.

  
And now this…

  
_This is your fault, Leia. If Ben’s gone, it’s your fault. You effectively drove him into a monster’s arms. You did this to him. You never gave him a chance. Now Han is dead, now Luke is dead. You just created a hell of your own making; this is the bed you made._

  
And to think she actually said that Ben was gone to the man who might have killed him…  
People deserved to feel safe in their own families. A family, to Leia, was something you leaned on when the galaxy was against you.   
She’d failed Ben.

  
She’d lost her son, forever.

  
It wasn’t because there was too much Vader in him, like she thought at first. It was because they had made choices for him, carefully laid out the foundations of him going down the Dark path because they were scared. (Han hadn’t done it. She and Luke certainly had) Because they thought they could see the future, see the bad in him, but none of the good. Leia had seen the good in him on D’Qar, when she had felt his repulsion at the Hosnian system being destroyed, but she had given up too easily.

  
She certainly had never dreamed that Luke would be such a fool — and in between mourning him, mourning her lost son also, she had to realize how Luke had lied to her. Luke wasn’t a bad person, but what he had done, she knew had been wrong…

  
Leia closed her eyes. She didn’t cry; she wasn’t the crying type. But she could at least rest for the moment. She’d have to arrange Luke’s funeral soon. He deserved that much.

  
And then…then perhaps she could decide where to go. Did Ben — did Kylo — even want to be saved?

  
Leia didn’t know. But stars willing, if she had the chance to begin again, she would take that chance.


End file.
